Biographical Note: Karen Horney was born Karen Danielsen in Hamburg, Germany, in 1885. She went to the medical school of the University of Freiburg, one of the first German universities to enroll women in medical studies. She transferred to the University of Göttingen in 1908, married Oscar Horney in 1909, and transferred once again to the University of Berlin, from which she graduated in 1913. She developed a strong interest in psychoanalysis early in her professional career, and was lecturing at the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Berlin by 1920. She was often classified as Neo-Freudian for her questioning of some traditional Freudian views. In 1930 Karen Horney and her three daughters immigrated to the United States, where they settled in Brooklyn, NY.  She soon became the Associate Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and published her very popular book The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937). Karen Horney  was an author of many books, a Dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, a professor at the New York Medical College, a founder of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. She continued teaching and practicing psychotherapy until her death in 1952.

Summary: the collection consists of 13 manuscript boxes of correspondence, papers, reviews, organization records, personal files, interviews, and photographs. While some of the documents are originals, much of the Horney material consists of photocopies. This is a research collection compiled by Susan Quinn for a biography of Karen Horney entitled A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney (1987). The collection includes Quinn’s annotations, research notes, and correspondence; documents are arranged by subject and appear in alphabetical order.

Finding Aid for this collection is available here. The photographs from the collection are listed here (viewing both files requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).


Related BPSI Collections
Hendrick, Ives (1898-1972) (contains K.Horney’s correspondence)

Related Sites
Karen Horney (Wikipedia Entry)
Karen Horney’s Biography by Dr. C. George Boeree
Karen Horney (from Women’s Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)